A Cheap Plastic Mask
by majormiryti
Summary: All Tim was trying to do was play a stupid prank on his friend. What happened afterwards, none of it was his fault.


It was just a cheap plastic mask, the kind you could buy for five bucks at any craft store, made of smooth, white plastic with holes cut for eyes and a little feminine nose. Completely nondescript, not even worth a second glance.

And then Tim got his hands on it.

He'd taken a Sharpie to the thing, blacking out the eyes and lips and drawing on little downturned eyebrows. The end result looked like the face of a twisted porcelain doll. Perfect.

Tim ran up to Brian as he was leaving his apartment and heading towards his car. "Hey, Brian, you got a minute?"

"I mean, I have class at ten, but…" Brian glanced at his watch. "I have a little time to waste. What is it?"

"I have this awesome idea for a joke to play on Alex. Are he and Jay still coming over to work on _Marble Hornets_ tonight?"

"As far as I know, yeah. What do you have in mind?"

Tim pulled the mask out of his backpack and handed it to Brian.

"A mask?"

"Yeah, we're gonna use it to freak Alex out. He _hates_ stuff like this."

Brian rubbed his thumb over the mask's lips. "Where'd you get this idea? It's pretty freaky-looking."

"Something I saw as a kid. Listen, though: what you're gonna do is somehow get away from him and Jay, maybe volunteer to go get snacks or something. Then just put this on and stand outside the living room window. Don't move, just stand there menacingly. I'll be inside, distracting them while you get in place. Maybe drawing attention to you if they're taking too long to notice." He noticed that Brian seemed a little apprehensive. "Come on, it'll be great."

"I don't know, Tim." Brian gave the mask back. "Alex has been a little on edge lately. I think the project's getting to him, and I don't want to upset him."

"It's just a stupid scare prank. It's harmless. If Alex can't take a joke, he needs to loosen up."

Brian thought for a minute, then smiled. "Sounds like a plan."

Later that night, he was having second thought about Tim's plan. He'd agreed to stand outside the window in the mask, yes, but he'd neglected to look at the weather for tonight. It was pouring rain, and Brian was miserable. He wanted nothing more than to go back inside, give Tim his stupid mask back and continue helping Alex with his script, no matter how bad it was turning out to be.

Tim himself wasn't helping. Brian could see him through the window, and he looked like he was in bad shape. He shivered despite the warm June weather, and he coughed almost constantly. Brian saw him take at least three doses of some sort of medicine during the twenty minutes he was outside. He seemed moody and generally very un-Tim-like.

After what seemed like hours, someone finally discovered Brian. Unfortunately, it wasn't his and Tim's original target.

"Can we –"Another cough interrupted Tim's question. "Can we take a break? I'm really not feeling this right now."

Alex frowned. "We just _had_ a break. We've barely worked on this ten minutes the whole time you've been here." He'd been fine when Tim first arrived, but with every minute that passed without Brian's return, he got more and more stressed out.

"Are you feeling okay?" Jay asked, worried. "You seem pretty sick."

Tim couldn't answer verbally, due to a severe coughing fit, but he nodded.

Alex shrugged. "If he says he's okay, we'll keep going, I guess. Can you close those blinds?"

Jay nodded. He went across the room to the window and came face-to-face with the masked man outside. "Holy _shit!_" He stumbled backwards, falling over into a nearby chair.

"What is it?" Alex had jumped up to join him at the window. "Someone out there?"

"There was some guy i-in a mask, just standing there, watching us!"

Alex pushed the blinds aside to peer outside. "Where?"

"He was right there!" Jay got up and stood next to him. "See, right over –" His face fell as he found the culprit. "Brian." He had the mask in his hand and a huge grin on his face, despite the rain. "Very funny. Can you come back inside now?"

Alex, on the other hand, did not look pleased. "Brian, what are you doing out there?"

Brian shrugged, still smiling. A few seconds later, he was walking in the front door, shaking the water out of his hair. "Just a joke, Alex. Just for fun."

"Well, it wasn't funny." Alex took the mask from him and started examining it. "You said you were leaving for snacks an hour ago, but you were just standing out there the entire time?"

Brian grabbed a towel from the bathroom and rubbed his head vigorously. "Yeah, we were trying to scare you, but that didn't go so well."

"'We'?"

"It was Tim's idea. He made the mask, too."

Alex glared at Tim, who returned the favor. "What made you think that was a good idea?"

"It was just for fun, Alex." Tim rolled his eyes. "A joke. Lighten up."

"Whatever. It wasn't funny, and it was a waste of time." He threw the mask at Tim, but it missed and landed on the floor by his feet. "Can we get back to the script now?"

Tim leaned down and picked up the mask. "Actually, you're right. I'm not feeling very well," he said, avoiding Alex's stare. "I think I'm going home. You guys work on it and call me tomorrow or something." He got off the couch and walked out the door, leaving the others staring after him.

He couldn't shake the feeling that the mask was watching him, too. Maybe it was the black eyes, maybe it was something else, but he didn't like having the mask around. It was kind of odd, since he was the one who'd made it, after all, but after the night at Brian's house, it seriously bothered Tim.

He'd hide it in drawers, in the closet, once even the refrigerator, but he always felt it watching him. He wrapped it in old shirts and threw it in a box he shoved under his bed, but that was almost worse. He finally just decided to leave it on his dresser, facing the ceiling, but he still found his mind wandering back to it during the day. How he couldn't hide it, why he couldn't get rid of it.

Tim tried to get rid of it, he really did, but every time he went to throw it away, something stopped him. It was never even a legitimate distraction that would make him forget about throwing the mask away; it was just…an inability to let go. He couldn't make himself get rid of the damn thing.

The whole situation was ridiculous. It was just a mask, just a stupid, cheap, plastic mask used months ago for a failed prank. Tim had no emotional attachment to it; in fact, he wanted it gone more than anything. No matter how much he tried, though, the mask never left his possession.

He still helped Alex with his student film, which kept his mind off the mask a little bit during the day. Alex was getting more and more temperamental, though, which stressed out the entire cast. He completely lost it during a shoot at the park one day, taking it out on poor Seth just because he had to bring his dog. Tim was trying to avoid Alex as much as he could, but considering he had a major role in _Marble Hornets_, this was a bit of a problem.

With the problems with Alex during the day and the mask haunting him at night, it was a miracle Tim got any sleep. He'd always had nightmares, ever since he was little, but usually he could keep them at bay. His medication helped, and he was beginning to think he'd outgrown them and would actually be somewhat normal for once, but once he brought that mask home, the nightmares not only returned, but they were ten times worse than he remembered.

The mask shouldn't have been keeping him up at all. It shouldn't have been worrying him; it shouldn't have given him nightmares. It wasn't even relevant anymore. It was just a mask, he told himself. Just a mask. Just a mask. A piece of plastic with Sharpie all over it. That was all.

A few months after the night at Brian's house, Tim got a frantic phone call from Jay. "Have you seen Alex lately?"

"Uh…no. Not since the last day of filming. We weren't exactly best friends at the end of it all, in case you didn't notice." He stifled a cough. "Why?"

"He hasn't shown up for classes for the past three days."

"Maybe he went on vacation with Amy. He _does_ have this little thing called free will, Jay; technically he can do whatever he wants."

"Amy hasn't seen him either. She was the first one I called."

Tim raised an eyebrow. "And? What'd she say?"

"She said the last time she talked to him was Sunday night but that he didn't seem nervous or weird or anything. She said he acted completely normal."

"Huh."

"She let me in his apartment with the key he gave her, and all his stuff was gone. It looked like no one had been there in months."

"When was the last time you talked to him?"

Jay sighed. "Last week. He told me he wanted to burn the _Marble Hornets_ tapes, but I convinced him to give them to me instead."

"Why? It's not like it was going to be _good_ or anything."

"I just…I didn't want to see all his work go to waste. That thing was his baby. He never shut up about it, especially at the beginning of production."

"Jay, it was bad even by student film standards. And he made it worse by being so psychotic."

Jay didn't answer.

"Did you at least watch them? Maybe there's something on them that explains why Alex went crazy."

"No, not yet. They're just on a shelf in my closet for now. I don't know what I'm going to do with them." He paused. "Let me know if you hear anything about Alex, okay?"

"Will do." Tim hung up and lit a cigarette he pulled out of the pack he kept in his back pocket. The next day, he got an email from Jay saying that he'd found out Alex had abruptly transferred to another school without bothering to tell any of his friends. All Tim needed to know was that he didn't have to deal with Alex and his temper ever again.

After Alex left, the mask quit troubling him. No more nightmares, no more coughing fits, nothing. Tim was feeling better, and things were looking good for him.

He left the university and started attending a community college a couple towns over while working to pay rent on his house. He still had to take his meds and go see a doctor every now and then, but all things considered, he thought he had it pretty good.

One night as he came home from work, three years after Alex disappeared, Tim felt like something was off about his house. Was something broken? Had he forgotten to turn something on or off? He walked around the house, turning on lights and inspecting every room. Everything seemed fine: no electrical appliances left on, no broken sinks or toilets, nothing. Even his bedroom was fine, nothing suspicious about it.

Except for the mask lying on his pillow.

Tim's eyes widened when he saw it. He staggered towards the bed, shaking his head. "No…no, I threw that out, I remember. I threw it out with the rest of that crap. How did it…?" He sat on the bed and picked it up to look at it. Nothing about the mask had changed: it still had the same black eyes and black lips, the same smug look on its face. But he'd finally thrown it away after Alex disappeared. He'd thrown out boxes of things from college, and he'd made sure the mask was one of them. How had it ended up on his bed?

He had the sudden urge to put it on. More than an urge, actually, it was more like someone was in his head _ordering_ him to wear the mask. But no, he wasn't going to do it. He'd dealt with this already; there was no way he was going back. Never. He'd moved on, he had a real life now. He was done with this bullshit.

The next thing Tim knew, he was standing in the bathroom watching himself put the mask on in the mirror. He screamed and tore it off his head, throwing it to the floor as he collapsed and curled into a ball in the corner. Nothing had happened for so long. What happened when he was a kid? Distant past; he'd moved on. He'd been getting better, and now, somehow, this thing had shown up and brought back too many bad memories.

Tim remembered everything – he remembered the hospital he went to over and over when he was little, the countless doctor's visits and medications, he remembered running away, always running away from something. He remembered how strange Alex had acted while filming his student project, and – when they went to the hospital.

Oh, no. No, no, no, no, not the hospital. That _thing_ was there, that thing that followed Alex, and it was the same thing that had followed him and Alex had just _given _him to it, given him to it like it was _nothing_.

Tim stayed in the bathroom, sobbing and shaking, for what felt like hours. The last thing he wanted or needed was to have to deal with these memories again. He thought he'd forgotten, he thought he was over it, he thought he was cured.

Surprise.

He looked at the mask again, lying on the floor by the shower. The mask wasn't to blame, was it? It was Alex, all Alex's fault. If it hadn't been for him, Tim would have gone on getting better and living a normal life. But then Alex had to show up and get involved with that…that thing and drag him back into this mess. It was all Alex's fault.

Tim reached out and picked up the mask, but this time he didn't hesitate in putting it on. Somehow, he knew this mask was going to help him get back at Alex. Kill Alex. Kill Alex like Alex tried to kill him.

He adjusted the strap to sit more comfortably on his ears and tried to make the mask itself fit his face better. No matter what he did, though, it still sat awkwardly, and he had to tilt his head back to see out the eyeholes. It didn't matter to him.

Tim stood there, perfectly still, looking at his reflection in the mirror. He could feel that he wasn't fully in control anymore. Someone else was in charge, and as long as their goal was the same as his, he didn't really care who or what it was.

Kill Alex.

Kill Alex.

Kill Alex.

_hello timothy, _he heard a voice say.

_we've got work to do_


End file.
